Session 11: Subcultures of Violence

Session 11: Subcultures of Violence
Chair: Tobe Levin

Political Hooliganism? The Politics of British Anti-racism and Anti-fascism
Jeremy Tranmer
University of Nancy, France

It is generally thought that Great Britain has been relatively immune to the political violence that affected other European countries at certain times in their recent history. From the 1970s onwards, British anti-racists and anti-fascists have, however, frequently resorted to violence to further their aims. National Front demonstrations were disrupted by the Anti-Nazi League in the 1970s, and Anti-Fascist Action prevented British National Party meetings from taking place in the 1980s and 1990s. This phenomenon has received very little academic analysis, and the press has often tended to equate it to football hooliganism. This paper will attempt to determine to what extent that view is founded and whether violence is inherent to British anti-racism and anti-fascism.
A brief comparison of the memoirs of football hooligans and militant anti-fascists shows striking similarities in their outlook and activities. For anti-fascists, however, violence is a means to an end and can be situated in a tradition of militant anti-fascism which dates back to the 1930s. It would be simplistic and incorrect to suggest that all activists eschewed peaceful means at all times, but the use of violence is one of the defining characteristics of British anti-racism and anti-fascism.
This can be explained partly by the aggressiveness of the extreme right in Britain, which has often attempted to impose its presence on the streets. Nevertheless, the determining factor is the anti-racists’ and anti-fascists’ analysis of their adversaries. Their tendency to view the extreme right as Nazis and their consequent refusal to allow it freedom of speech (the ‘no platform’ analysis) has led to violence being justified in order to prevent history from repeating itself. As a result, the potential for violence is constantly present within significant sections of the anti-racist and anti-fascist movement in Britain.

“Another Case of un-shameful robbery…” Violence, Crime and the Local Press in a Provincial City of Greece
Stratos Georgoulas
Department of Sociology, University of the Aegean, Greece

This paper’s basic affair of work is that the press, through the presentation of criminal incidents, transmits an evaluative knowledge determining this way, desirable objectives and propagating for canonistic types of behaviour. The daily knowledge as a constitutive element of the daily reality is a condition of interaction between the members of a society. In that sense, the local press that transmits this daily knowledge constitutes a dominant structuring factor of this reality.
My research which is based on content analysis of newspaper articles of the whole local press of Mytilene (the capital of the prefecture of Lesbos in Greece ) published between January – March 2004 and additional interviews from journalists aims to illustrate the following:
a. The concept of criminality is being constructed both qualitatively and quantitatively through local press and not vice versa.
b. The local press evaluates negatively illegal behaviours, positively the austerisation of social control, while in most cases it cancels any relevance with the social frame of criminality.
c. The local press with the dramatic narrations that uses it causes fear of victimisation.
d. The journalists transmit evaluative knowledge in an attempt to cover the lack of knowledge of real criminological data.

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This study seeks to analyse some of the factors that explain participation in Jihadist networks in the west. Our presentation will pay particular attention to two issues: the creation of a value system that justifies terrorism and the formation of a Jihadist counterculture in the heart of western societies.
It is asserted that psychological studies on the behaviour of the perpetrators of genocide and terrorism provide substantial insight into the construction of individual values. In our study, the Jihad counterculture leads to a rationalization of violence, a process that could be defined as ‘negative rationalization’. Via this process, the individual believes he/she is part of legitimate defensive war against enemies of Islam. The killing of innocents is considered unavoidable, victimisation is reversed and blame is re-assigned to the adversary.
The study examines the contents of this belief system and highlights strategic, religious and identity considerations. The processes that give rise to the construction of a Jihadist counterculture, taking the disbanded networks in Spain as our main case study, are also explored. A current legal investigation into one of these networks provides crucial information on the internal relations, agents and dynamics of socialization, and the promoters of the Jihadist counterculture in Spain. It also permits insight into the relationship between the counterculture and its surrounding environment: in effect, members of the Islamic communities and Spanish society.
Overall, our investigation supports specialist literature on the rationalization of violence and violent countercultures; and theoretical propositions are matched with real examples of the Spanish experience.

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